Here they are, gawking ones, a pocketful of curses, not empty spells cast by angry incompetents, red-faced over banquet tables, nay, but sordid troubles embroidered well unfurled in spells untoward able to ignite the great metamorphoses, yes, you’ve seen well, but subtler spoilers come in handy too, right spit words that make you miss crucial connections in distant stations, leaving you as lone, soft, and vulnerable prey for salivating wolves who dine on lamb and ewe. Or you drool yourself, dripping constant stains, or spilling through passing palsy drops of shame from pewter spoons and crystal bowls, splotching dress shirts and fine silks, all now spoiled for public judgment. Then fun too: rich, pungent flatulence summoned at intimate times, with counterpoints of noxious belch and burp, and rich myriad tapestries of ill blushings, lavender rashes, and textured boils, a plague of unreachable itches desperate for their needed scratches, all indulgently accented with lasting urinary burnings. Not enough? More, then, more. Grave addictions, the harshest needs, the barest raw hungers, all voracious open-mouthed, and panting to fill a gaping hole with alcohol, baccarat, horse cocks, or the poppy scar’s sap, yes. Then of course taunting self-doubts, gnats of insecurities, shaming anxieties that flash white and hollow like lightning bolts tearing through sturdy hilltop elms. A vague but constant sense of forgetfulness, always nipping with haunt or a shadowed guilt for an imagined crime that chews and frays at your tired mind. Oh, a fierce envy for new polished shoes or great worthless land tracts, a fevered lust for rubies, sapphires, pearl, and other beachcombed stones, a gravitational attraction and steady pull toward expensive strangers. A gift for spilling teacups and dropping china, a tendency to catch cloth on lit candles or absently forgetting hearth and stoves till cherished cottage and castle have all turned to cinder. A strong wind for ill rumors, the instinct to fold both winning hands and good enterprise. Thick ears, stubborn pride, intolerance for strange skin and foreign tribes. A profound, waist-swelling and spine-splitting constipation, thick running noses spilling green, infused with muck, or, worse, eyes weeping ceaselessly till red, bloody, and blind. Our choice, we can pick, between sullen disappointments of impotence or the sorry prodding signals of poorly timed erections, and even better yet, a splendid epilepsy of unending ejaculation. A constant aching and swooning in extreme sexual longing for the inappropriate people and inanimate things. Then there’s the murderous, a matricidal hunger, a patricidal bend, or, to be simple again, we can loosen an indiscreet tongue providing an unwanted gift for grave offense and a penchant for fouling any convivial humor. Yes, more than once we’ve been known to bestow the naked pining for limelight, the stark drive for a crown, and the false nobility of immortal ambitions. Finally, and darkest of all, the most elegant curse, a numbing inability to sense or comprehend true virtue: constancy, patience, generosity, and dear kindness, when they are held in the palm of your very own hand, seated by your hearth, lying in your bed, when all that could fulfill your own heart’s hope until your last and final day is standing by your side, bright-eyed and true, while you, so oblivious, set your hungry eye a-wandering… Noelle awoke cold and shivering on the stoop. The chicken was asleep in her arms, its head tucked under one russet wing. The old woman had said she would be right back but now the streets were almost bare of traffic and the sidewalk was empty, so she guessed some time had passed, and yet Elga was nowhere in sight. Noelle rose and, hauling the chicken up under her arm, began making her way down the street with tentative, sleepy steps. A glowing green clock on the wall of a shuttered cafe told her it was three a.m. Perhaps Elga had driven off and forgotten her. That seemed possible, the old woman was moody and hard to predict. Noelle knew she had disappointed her in the fight with the bad woman, but Elga had seemed kind about it afterward, even forgiving. So it did not make sense that she would have abandoned her. There must be some other explanation.
Noelle walked down toward what she thought was the center of the city. She knew if she followed the lights of the Eiffel Tower she would eventually reach the Seine and there, somewhere near the Louvre, she would find
